Silicon Valley's unicorns eye Dropbox ahead of IPO

Online file storage company Dropbox, one of Silicon Valley's highest-valued privately held startups, has filed paperwork for an IPO.
Gigaom

by
Nick Wingfield and Matt Phillips

Online file storage company Dropbox, one of Silicon Valley's highest-valued privately held startups, has filed paperwork to sell its shares to the public, potentially heralding a wave of other tech IPOs.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, Dropbox said it planned to raise up to $US500 million ($637 million) in the offering, and intended to use the money for a variety of purposes, including potential acquisitions. Dropbox was last valued by private-market investors at about $US10 billion.

Dropbox boss Drew Houston helped found the company in 2007, initially naming it Even Flow after a song of the same name by the rock band Pearl Jam. His goal was to make it easier for people to gain access to all their digital information, including documents and photos, on any device, and to automatically keep all those files updated as they were modified.

Since then, Dropbox, based in San Francisco, has grown into one of the leading file-syncing services, though it faces stiff competition from Google, Microsoft and others. In its filing, Dropbox said it had more than 500 million registered users, more than 11 million of whom paid for the service.

While Dropbox still loses money, those deficits are narrowing. Last year, it lost $US112 million, compared with $US210 million the previous year. The company's revenue rose to $US1.11 billion last year from $US845 million the year before.